Like Lasagna

I’m a fan of hip-hop wordplay and good rhyme schemes. It’s truly one of those things I can watch YouTube videos for hours about, breaking down an artist’s lyrical set. Lil’ Wayne has a line that says:

Real G’s move in silence like lasagna

It’s one of his more popular lines. It’s known as a homophone gag. “Lasagna” is silent in the G (you don’t say the G when you pronounce it), so “real G’s move in silence like lasagna” works on two levels simultaneously: the street meaning of “G” (gangster, someone serious) and the literal letter G sitting silent in the word lasagna.

It’s the kind of line that’s almost aggressively simple once you see it, but the setup is so unexpected that it lands hard. Wayne built a whole career on that kind of lateral thinking, where he’d find connections between things that have no business being connected and making them feel inevitable in hindsight.

“Real G’s move in silence”. The concept being the whole world doesn’t need to know your business. This is something that’s really landing with me at the moment. I’ve caught myself posting my life a little more on socials in what feels like a bit of attention-seeking. It’s to the point I’ve deleted any algorithmic social media of my phone again to remove any kind of easy access to it. I don’t really like performing for people as it starts to feel inauthentic to me. And frankly, everyone doesn’t need to know everything.

And yet, here I am posting this to a personal website. My personal website. It’s a true statement, that this is different because this space is mine, but it also feels thin. But there’s a major difference in how people arrive here.

Socials are a push medium. I post there, the platform distributes it, and people find it whether they’re looking for it or not. The algorithm decides who sees it and when, or maybe even not at all. Even when I’m being genuine, the structure feels like I’m standing at a busy intersection, shouting from on top of a milk crate while handing out flyers. I can see who walked past, especially those who walked past without checking in on me, which isn’t something someone in my mental state needs right now.

On the other hand, this is a website that runs no analytics, doesn’t host comments, likes, or share counts, and nothing is pushed anywhere. It’s considered a pull medium, in that it exists, but you have to come to it. I have to be found. I feel this changes the nature in how I write, where I’m not broadcasting for the world, but as I’ve often stated, I’m talking to a small community of mostly anonymous people. Whoever finds it, finds it, and if you stay and read, then that’s a choice you made, not something you did because it was spoon-fed to you.

This is an important clarification. Withdrawing from social media isn’t about going silent, but it’s about changing who does the work. The people who are willing to do the work of reaching me here are the exact ones I’m writing for. It’s like the G in lasagna, as it doesn’t announce itself, but it’s there if you’re looking for it.

With my Thursday posts, I text the links out to a couple of friends for them to look at when time permits. I occasionally get feedback, which is nice. I don’t want any of this to feel forced, so it’s not like I’m asking for a full report back, just an understanding that I’m saying the things that are on my mind and this is my way of working through a busy world when I don’t always have everyone’s attention.

One thing I did for my mom is I installed an RSS reader on her phone and added my site’s feed to it. She receives my posts as I write them, in chronological order, and she can read them at her leisure. She still has to find my stuff, but I’ve taken a little of the work out for her. Part of me wants to do the same thing to my friends, instead of sending links out.

RSS is a radically user-controlled concept in 2026. You subscribe to the exact things you want to in one place, and it shows up chronologically. There’s no algorithm deciding what’s relevant, no fucking ads at all, and there’s no optimization for engagement. So, when I suggest someone should follow me via RSS, I’m doing two things at once. It’s a practical path to my writing that doesn’t require social media. It’s also a quiet argument for a different relationship with the internet, one that is built on intention rather than impulse.

For the person who subscribes to this site, they’re not only getting my Thursday posts, but everything else I post throughout the week. Given this is a deliberate act to follow, the reader is paying attention in a way the passive scroller on social media never is. I feel like there’s something more intimate in that. I also feel like RSS apps lay things out better than any social media app.

So, I can either keep sending the links, as there’s something personal in that too. But, I would also love to try the RSS approach. This would allow me to just write freely, while allowing my close friends to decide how they want to read my stuff. And yes, I would help if needed.

I’m trying to do a couple of things right now. First, I’m trying to turn down the noise in my mind that occurs when I start doomscrolling all the time. My social feed is filled with things I enjoy like cat videos and people getting drilled in the face with footballs. It’s also filled with a shitload of contradictory advice on how to go about my life. And then there are all the fucking ads. Where my writing space feels like a quiet room where I can collect my thoughts, social media is basically Times Square with all the flashing lights and billboards everywhere. I’m overstimulated to the point of feeling ill sometimes. In silence, I can actually start to recognize which thoughts are mine.

I also don’t want to minimize myself. I don’t want to shrink myself into something sharable and digestible. Sometimes my thoughts are a tough piece of gristle that needs to be chewed on a little bit. I went to a baseball game the other night and the way I would have described being there was far deeper than any photo I shared on my Instagram reel could have spoken to. I want to be felt far more than I’m simply seen.

So, that’s where we are. I might be a little harder to find, but I trust that the right people will do the looking. I’m here.